Employee found dead after St. Paul Park refinery explosion

An employee missing after a fire broke out in a fuel oil tank at the Marathon Petroleum Co. refinery has been found dead.
Company spokesman Robert Calmus said the body of Nick Gunter, 29, of Hastings was found Sunday afternoon. Gunter was an operator in the blending area of the refinery and had been with Marathon since January 2006.
"We kept trying to keep our hopes up," Calmus said Sunday. "Our thoughts and prayers are with his family."
The cause of Gunter's death was being investigated. Authorities were also investigating the cause of the fire, which happened Saturday morning and was contained to a small area -- a 10,000 barrel tank that contained fuel oil.
"We're going to work with local officials and people like OSHA and our own internal investigators to do everything we can to establish the cause" and prevent similar tragedies in the future, Calmus said.
He added that employees were being offered counseling to deal with the tragedy.
The fire did not halt operations at the St. Paul Park facility, Calmus said.
There hasn't been a fatality at the refinery since 1978, Calmus said. Marathon Petroleum did not own the refinery at that time.
The refinery has a capacity of 70,000 barrels per day, according to Marathon's Web site. The refinery processes crude oil from Canada and the United States into gasoline, diesel, fuel oil, jet fuel, kerosene, propane and asphalt. Most gasoline produced at the refinery is marketed locally at SuperAmerica stations.
Earlier in the week, an oil pipeline explosion near Clearbook in northern Minnesota killed two workers and briefly caused world oil prices to spike. The Enbridge Energy pipeline system in that area carries roughly 16 percent of U.S. crude imports.
(Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)